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Conoco OKs NEWS - 03/29/2015(Full story)ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. will expand Drill Site 1H at the Kuparuk River unit.
The operator and its fellow working interest owners have approved an approximately $460 million project to add a 9.3-acre extension to the existing North Slope drill site and to install surface facilities to support four....

Repsol asks for new unit - 03/29/2015(Full story)Repsol E&P USA Inc. has applied for a 63,304-acre unit on the North Slope. The Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas said March 23 that Repsol applied to form the Pikka unit between the Colville River unit to the west, the Oooguruk unit to the east and the Placer and Tofkat units t....

New DOI fracking rules - 03/29/2015(Full story)The Department of the Interior has issued a final version of new regulations for the drilling of hydraulically fractured wells on federal land. The regulations will go into effect after a mandatory 90-day waiting period.
“Current federal well-drilling regulations are more than 30 years old and they....

Canada cuts go deeper, wider - 03/29/2015Not that there was any doubt, but March 18 and 19 provided ample proof of deepening woes in the Canadian oil patch.
Big players Nexen (owned by state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp.), ConocoPhillips and Talisman Energy (recently taken over by Spain's Repsol) laid off hundreds of employees.
C....

McGuire pushes Alaska's role in Arctic - 03/29/2015In less than a month, the United States takes over as chair for the Arctic Council, a consortium of eight Arctic nations trying to work together with policy decisions.
Sen. Lesil McGuire has been on the front lines of Arctic policy issues and co-chaired the state's Arctic Policy Commission.
McGuire,....

BlueCrest seeking Cosmo unit - 03/29/2015BlueCrest Alaska Operating LLC wants to form a new Cosmopolitan unit.
The local subsidiary of the Texas-based independent is asking the state to form a seven-lease unit over 22,535 acres off Anchor Point. The unit would include ADL 18790, ADL 384403, ADL 391899, ADL 391900, ADL 391902, ADL 391903 an....

Jewell argues for more focused leasing - 03/29/2015During a March 17 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said that Interior is reforming its oil and gas lease sale programs, to engage with the public in figuring out where it does or doesn't make sense to develop oil and gas resources.
....

Cleanup continues at Milne Point spill - 03/29/2015Cleanup continues at the site of the Feb. 28 Milne Point tract 14 production line spill.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention and Response, said in a March 18 situation report that engineering calculations by field operator Hilcorp Alaska show an estimat....

Call for new info for state fall sales - 03/29/2015The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, has a call out for new information for its 2015 fall areawide oil and gas lease sales: Beaufort Sea, North Slope and North Slope Foothills.
The division is requesting “substantial new information concerning these areas that has be....

State OKs S. Granite Point expansion - 03/29/2015The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas has approved an application from Hilcorp Alaska to expand the 4,689-acre South Granite Point unit in Cook Inlet to include the adjacent 10,722-acre Granite Point field and rename it the Granite Point unit.
Granite Point produces from the Granite Point, Anna and Br....

Legislators work to increase spill fund - 03/29/2015House Bill 158 and Senate Bill 86, both moving through the Alaska Legislature, address the same issue — funding for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Spill Prevention and Response is running a deficit as crude oil production declines, reducing income to the Oil and Ha....

Arctic sea ice extent lowest on record - 03/29/2015The Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its maximum extent for the winter, but that maximum is the lowest on record, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported. The annual ice melt got under way on Feb. 25, an earlier date than normal, with the ice extent at 5.61 million miles. That was 5....

ASRC meets conditions at Placer unit - 03/29/2015The state has officially expanded the Placer unit.
ASRC Exploration LLC has satisfied the first two conditions of a November 2014 ruling, which required the company to file an amended plan of exploration for the North Slope unit and to post a $2.5 million performance bond by January 2015 to backstop....

CIE still pursuing west side investment - 03/29/2015Through its subsidiary Cook Inlet Energy LLC, Miller Energy Resources Inc. started its tenure in Alaska by reviving the Redoubt unit and West McArthur River unit.
With the company having since acquired the North Fork unit in the southern Kenai Peninsula and the North Slope operator Savant Alaska LLC....

HB 132 moves to Senate on 24-14 vote - 03/29/2015House Bill 132, sponsored by House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, moved through two House committees, Energy and Resources, with minor changes and passed the House 24-14 March 23.
The bill restricts the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. from competing with the Alaska LNG project until the earlies....

State approves Hooligan PA - 03/29/2015The state has formed a Hooligan participating area at the Northstar unit.
The participating area changes the administrative status of production from the Kuparuk formation at the North Slope unit. The formation began producing on a tract basis in 2006 and had been in sustained production since 2010,....

Some big programs start small but grow - 03/29/2015Formed under the terms of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council has for the past 25 years been furthering a series of projects, triggered by the council's mandate to monitor the environmental impacts of oil in the....

State approves Cook Inlet seismic survey - 03/29/2015On March 18 Alaska's Division of Oil and Gas approved a land use permit for SAExploration to conduct a 3-D seismic survey in the upper Cook Inlet. According to the approval notice the survey will take place in state waters west of the northern Kenai Peninsula. The survey area, encompassing about 821....

Hopes build for BC refinery - 03/29/2015There is a ready-made market in Asia for products, especially diesel, from a refinery planned for the British Columbia coast, says a consultant for the proponent Pacific Future Energy.
The facility could be profitable if it can produce “highly sought after” diesel, Ron Loborec, Canadian energy leade....

Oil Patch Bits: Cindy Shake joins AECOM team - 03/29/2015Cindy Shake has joined AECOM as a public affairs specialist. Shake is a versatile, award-winning communication professional and was named 2014 Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association, Alaska Chapter. She was principal of a successful graphic design firm for more than 25 years and....

Oil Patch Bits: Calista Corp. sets record shareholder dividend - 03/29/2015Calista Corp.'s 11th shareholder dividend since inception is the largest in its corporate history. This 2015 shareholder dividend distribution totals $5.05 million and is the ninth dividend since 2007. The total distribution of Calista's shareholder dividends is $31.3 million, with 50 percent of tha....

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